Chapter 2

I arrived at Lucy Shepard's place in a rage, ready to vent my fury—only to find her hunched over a pile of laundry. Her hands were submerged in the water as she scrubbed a pair of men's underwear against the washboard by hand.

That only fanned the flames even more.

"What on earth are you doing? You just gave birth! Who told you to sit on the bathroom floor and do the laundry by hand? You should be resting in bed! Where's Anna? I hired you a housekeeper for a reason!"

Lucy jumped, as if alarmed by the barrage of questions from me.

"Mom? What are you doing here? It's fine. My mother-in-law said that doing some chores would help with my recovery. It's not good for me to be lying in bed the whole time. As for Anna… my mother-in-law sent her home."

"What? She sent Anna home? When is Anna coming back then? I'm still paying her a salary, so how can she just leave like that?"

I immediately sensed there was something fishy afoot.

Lucy's eyes flickered evasively. "My mother-in-law lost close to a million dollars while gambling, so she took Anna's salary to cover some of her debts first. But she's been on a winning streak lately. Once she wins back all the money, she'll pay it back…"

Although she trailed off without saying anything else, I'd heard enough.

Every month, I sent Lucy a sizable sum of money to pay for Anna's salary, along with a nanny to help with the baby.

But Molly Kramer, that mother-in-law of hers, had whisked all of the money away to fund her gambling addiction.

Meanwhile, my own daughter had to wash the entire family's clothes by hand in the dead of winter—all in the name of doing chores to help with her recovery!

Seething with rage, I snapped in a trembling voice, "Are you an idiot? How can you be so flippant about your own health? You just gave birth! If you don't get enough rest, your body will be weakened for good. You might even end up with a chronic condition!

"Why do you blindly follow everything your mother-in-law tells you? Can't you see that she's just trying to make you wait on the family like a maid?"

"Mom! Can you not always assume the worst of people?" Lucy whipped her head up, her gaze resentful. "My mother-in-law means well! She says a woman can't be too spoiled and pampered. I need to work hard to support my family.

"Paul works hard to earn a living. If I can help out around the house, it's only right that I should. What's so wrong about that? You're the one who insisted on hiring a housekeeper for me, making it seem like I can't even lift a finger at home.

"Do you know what my mother-in-law and the neighbors will think of me?"

Lucy's brainwashed spiel drenched me like a bucket of cold water, dampening out the last spark of hope I had. I was enraged by her foolishness, feeling both anxious and frustrated.

Taking a deep breath, I said, "Fine. I'll drop the issue with Anna for now. Do you know what Paul did at the vital records office today?

"He publicly threatened to jump off the building to force me into changing your son's name. He's not Nicholas Shepherd anymore. He's Nicholas Cranston. Did you know about this?"

I thought Lucy would be shocked, but I was wrong. Her brows merely creased a little, and her expression was a mix of impatience and resentment.

"I knew you were going to bring this up. Isn't it just a last name? Why are you so hung up on it? No matter whose last name he takes, he's still my child and your grandson," she declared.

"Paul is also under a lot of pressure, you know. Everyone keeps mocking him for living off his wife's family. He just wants to reclaim his dignity by letting our son take his last name. What's so wrong about that?"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"You need to get your facts straight, Lucy! His family accepted ten million dollars and an apartment from us. He himself agreed that all your children will follow your last name! Yet here you are, thinking that the situation is unfair to him?

"What happened to you? Are you so blinded by love that your brain stopped working, too?"

I even raised my hand, only to slowly lower it again. At the end of the day, Lucy was still my daughter. I couldn't bear to hit her.

However, she started screaming in my face, her tears spilling from her eyes.

"You're just a stubborn, old-fashioned woman! All you care about is carrying on the Shepherd line. You don't care about my happiness at all!"